


Survivors

by chordatesrock



Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: (nor is Jak but no one will know that for centuries), (the Fisherman isn't!), Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Everything's Better With Past!Fic, Gen, I lied and there are barely any lurkers in this fic :((((, One Shot, Sandover, TPL-era fic, because TPL-era lurkers are fascinating, everyone the Explorer has ever loved is dead, lurkers, lurkers in general are fascinating, oh noes the freeform tags are unwrangleable!, there should be more lurkerfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 05:11:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chordatesrock/pseuds/chordatesrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Explorer returns from his journey only to find Sandover deserted. He goes looking for survivors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survivors

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written in response to a prompt from shyrstyne (on LJ).

The Explorer returned to Sandover Village to find it deserted. There was dried blood on the sand in the corral, and on the farmer’s porch, but the yakows and the farmer were nowhere to be seen. He crossed the bridge and went to his own home first, to assess the damage there. There was little out of place, nothing that couldn’t be explained easily enough by Jak moving things around. Speaking of whom, where was he?

The Explorer made his way toward the Sage’s lab, where a large rift hung in the sky. The artifact that looked like a large zoomer was gone. He called out, but no one answered him from inside the building. There was no one left in Sandover.

There was no one left _alive_ in Sandover.

He warped to Rock Village, a place he had been once, years before. He had expected to find it thriving, but he saw no one at all in the village square when he looked through the Blue Sage’s telescope.

He heard footsteps behind him and turned to find a metal-plated creature. It had forward-facing eyes and sharp teeth: it had to be a predator. It advanced on him, and he jumped through the warp gate.

He came out in the scorching-hot Volcanic Crater. There was no one in the Red Sage’s lab, so he walked out onto the wooden bridge. He heard a creaking noise and went to investigate. There was a gondola; he got onto the lift and turned it on. It worked.

It was a relief to get above the heat, but, sweaty as he was, he wouldn’t have minded stopping before he reached the snow. He got off the gondola and found that the snow was deeper than it looked. He struggled to move forward, and the cold made the pain in his leg flare up.

He was just about to turn back when a lurker leapt out of a snowdrift up ahead. He took a cautious step backward, watching it.

It beckoned to him.

“Come, human! I don’t bite!” it called out. It had a thick accent, but it could speak.

“I didn’t know lurkers could talk,” he said.

“I don’t speak your language. The Fisherman taught me some phrases.”

“The one from Sandover?” the Explorer asked hopefully.

“I don’t speak your language,” the lurker repeated. “Come, human!” The lurker jumped a gap that the Explorer didn’t think he could cross on his own.

“I can’t follow!” he called. Even though it didn’t understand the words, the lurker turned back. He sat back down on the gondola and pointed to his leg. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to jump that far,” he said. “It’s my leg. You see?”

The lurker came back to him. It looked at his leg. It poked his leg curiously and looked up at his face.

He made a pained face and pointed more insistently to his leg.

The lurker’s expression and posture seemed to change, but whether that meant it understood or not was unclear. It ran off, leaving the Explorer to consider whether he should ride back down to Volcanic Crater before he froze to death.

It came back with a floating Precursor platform.

“A capital idea!” the Explorer told it, getting up from the gondola. He got onto the platform cautiously; it was never a good idea to let one’s guard down around Precursor technology.

The lurker took him to a wooden fort. The gate was lowered for them to pass, then raised again. There appeared to be several humans in the fort: a tall man with a pet bird, two women the Explorer didn’t recognize, a man who had to be the Red Sage, and the Fisherman.

“What happened?” the Explorer asked.

“Some monsters came through the rift Jak and Samos opened,” said the Fisherman.

“And is Jak here with you?”

The Fisherman shook his head. “Course not. He and a few others were right there when the rift opened. I went back to look, but there was nothing left. Those monsters didn’t even leave their goggles.”

The Explorer shivered. It was probably from the cold, because he was too numb to feel anything else.


End file.
